GREY COATS.
I went back to school comforted. I had got strength to face
all that might be coming in the future. And life has been a
different thing to me ever since. Paul's words, "I can do all
things through Christ," I have learned are not his words any
more than mine.
From that time I grew more and more popular in the school. I
cannot tell why; but, popularity is a thing that grows upon
its own growth. It was only a little while before my
companions almost all made a pet of me. It is humbling to know
that this effect was hastened by some of the French dresses my
mother had sent me, and which convenience obliged me to wear.
They were extremely pretty; the girls came round me to know
where I got them, and talked about who I was; and "Daisy
Randolph," was the name most favoured by their lips from that
time until school closed. With the exception, I must add, of
my four room-mates. Miss St. Clair held herself entirely aloof
from me, and the others chose her party rather than mine. St.
Clair never lost, I think, any good chance or omitted any fair
scheme to provoke me; but all she could do had lost its power.
I tried to soften her; but Faustina was a rock to my advances.
I knew I had done irreparable wrong that evening; the thought
of it was almost the only trouble I had during those months.
An old trouble was brought suddenly home to me one day. I was
told a person wanted to speak to me in the lower hall. I ran
down, and found Margaret. She was in the cloak and dress I had
bought for her; looking at first very gleeful, and then very
business-like, as she brought out from under her cloak a bit
of paper folded with something in it.
"What is this?" I said, finding a roll of bills.
"It's my wages, Miss Daisy. I only kept out two dollars, ma'am
I wanted a pair of shoes so bad and I couldn't be let go
about the house in them old shoes with holes in 'em; there was
holes in both of 'em, Miss Daisy."
"But your wages, Margaret?" I said; "I have nothing to do with
your wages."
"Yes, Miss Daisy they belongs to master, and I allowed to
bring 'em to you. They's all there so fur. It's all right."
I felt the hot shame mounting to my face. I put the money back
in Margaret's hand, and hurriedly told her to keep it; we were
not at Magnolia; she might do what she liked with the money;
it was her own earnings.
I shall never forget the girl's confounded look, and then her
grin of brilliant pleasure. I could have burst into tears as I
went up the stairs, thinking of others at home. Yet the
question came too, would my father like what I had been doing?
He held the girl to be his property and her earnings his
earnings. Had I been giving Margaret a lesson in rebellion,
and preparing her to claim her rights at some future day?
Perhaps. And I made up my mind that I did not care. Live upon
stolen money I would not, any more than I could help. But
was I not living on it all the while? The old subject brought
back! I worried over it all the rest of the day, with many a
look forward and back.
As the time of the vacation drew near, I looked hard for news
of my father and mother, or tidings of their coming home.
There were none. Indeed, I got no letters at all. That was
nothing to cause uneasiness; the intervals were often long
between one packet of letters and the next; but now I wanted
to hear of some change, now that the school year was ended. It
had been a good year to me. In that little world I had met and
faced some of the hardest temptations of the great world; they
could never be new to me again; and I had learned both my
weakness and my strength.
No summons to happiness reached me that year. My vacation was
spent again with my aunt Gary, and without Preston. September
saw me quietly settled at my studies for another school year;
to be gone through with what patience I might.
That school year had nothing to chronicle. I was very busy,
very popular, kindly treated by my teachers, and happy in a
smooth course of life. Faustina St. Clair had been removed
from the school; to some other I believe; and with her went
all my causes of annoyance. The year rolled round, my father
and mother in China or on the high seas; and my sixteenth
summer opened upon me.
A day or two before the close of school, I was called to the
parlour to see a lady. Not my aunt; it was Mrs. Sandford; and
the doctor was with her.
I had not seen Mrs. Sandford, I must explain, for nearly a
year; she had been away in another part of the country, far
from New York.
"Why, Daisy! is this Daisy?" she exclaimed.
"Is it not?" I asked.
"Not the old Daisy. You are so grown, my dear! so That's
right, Grant; let us have a little light to see each other
by."
"It is Miss Randolph " said the doctor, after he had drawn up
the window shade.
"Like her mother! Isn't she? and yet, not like "
"Not at all like."
"She is, though, Grant; you are mistaken; she is like her
mother; though as I said, she isn't. I never saw anybody so
improved. My dear, I shall tell all my friends to send their
daughters to Mme. Ricard."
"Dr. Sandford," said I, "Mme. Ricard does not like to have the
sun shine into this room."
"It's Daisy too," said the doctor, smiling, as he drew clown
the shade again. "Don't you like it, Miss Daisy?"
"Yes, of course," I said; "but she does not."
"It is not at all a matter of course," said he; "except as you
are Daisy. Some people, as you have just told me, are afraid
of the sun."
"Oh, that is only for the carpets," I said.
Dr. Sandford gave me a good look, like one of his looks of old
times, that carried me right back somehow to Juanita's
cottage.
"How do you do, Daisy?"
"A little pale," said Mrs. Sandford.
"Let her speak for herself."
I said I did not know I was pale.
"Did you know you had headache a good deal of the time?"
"Yes, Dr. Sandford, I knew that. It is not very bad."
"Does not hinder you from going on with study?"
"Oh no, never."
"You have a good deal of time for study at night, too, do you
not? after the lights are out?"
"At night? how did you know that? But it is not always _study_."
"No. You consume also a good deal of beef and mutton, now-a-
days? you prefer substantials in food as in everything else?"
I looked at my guardian, very much surprised that he should
see all this in my face, and with a little of my childish
fascination about those steady blue eyes. I could not deny
that in these days I scarcely lived by eating. But in the
eagerness and pleasure of my pursuits I had not missed it, and
amid my many busy and anxious thoughts I had not cared about
it.
"That will do," said the doctor. "Daisy, have you heard lately
from your father or mother?"
My breath came short, as I said no.
"Nor have I. Failing orders from them, you are bound to
respect mine; and I order you change of air, and to go
wherever Mrs. Sandford proposes to take you."
"Not before school closes, Dr. Sandford?"
"Do you care about that?"
"My dear child," said Mrs. Sandford, "we are going to West
Point and we want to take you with us. I know you will enjoy
it, my dear; and I shall be delighted to have you. But we want
to go next week."
"Do you care, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford repeated.
I had to consider. One week more, and the examination would be
over and the school term ended. I was ready for the
examination; I expected to keep my standing, which was very
high; by going away now I should lose that, and miss some
distinction. So at least I thought. I found that several
things were at work in my heart that I had not known were
there. After a minute I told Mrs. Sandford I would go with her
when she pleased.
"You have made up your mind that you do not care about staying
to the end here?" said the doctor.
"Dr. Sandford," I said, "I believe I _do_ care; but not about
anything worth while."
He took both my hands, standing before me, and looked at me, I
thought, as if I were the old little child again.
"A course of fresh air," he said, "will do you more good than
a course of any other thing just now. And we may find
'wonderful things' at West Point, Daisy."
"I expect you will enjoy it, Daisy," Mrs. Sandford repeated.
There was no fear. I knew I should see Preston at any rate;
and I had been among brick walls for many months. I winced a
little at thought of missing all I had counted upon at the
close of term; but it was mainly pride that winced, so it was
no matter.
We left the city three or four days later. It was a June day
can I ever forget it? What a brilliance of remembrance comes
over me now! The bustle of the close schoolrooms, the heat and
dust of the sunny city streets, were all left behind in an
hour; and New York was nowhere! The waves of the river
sparkled under a summer breeze; the wall of the palisades
stretched along, like the barriers of fairyland; so they
seemed to me; only the barrier was open and I was about to
enter. So till their grey and green ramparts were passed, and
the broader reaches of the river beyond, and as evening began
to draw in we came to higher shores and a narrower channel,
and were threading our way among the lights and shadows of
opposing headlands and hilltops. It grew but more fresh and
fair as the sun got lower. Then, in a place where the river
seemed to come to an end, the _Pipe of Peace_ drew close, in
under the western shore, to a landing. Buildings of grey stone
clustered and looked over the bank. Close under the bank's
green fringes a little boat-house and large clean wooden pier
received us; from the landing a road went steeply sloping up.
I see it all now in the colours which clothed it then. I think
I entered fairyland when I touched foot to shore. Even down at
the landing, everything was clean and fresh and in order. The
green branches of that thick fringe which reached to the top
of the bank had no dust on them; the rocks were parti-coloured
with lichens; the river was bright, flowing and rippling past;
the _Pipe of Peace_ had pushed off and sped on, and in another
minute or two was turning the point, and then out of sight.
Stillness seemed to fill the woods and the air as the beat of
her paddles was lost. I breathed stillness. New York was fifty
miles away, physically and morally at the antipodes.
I find it hard to write without epithets. As I said I was in
fairyland; and how shall one describe fairyland?
Dr. Sandford broke upon my reverie by putting me into the
omnibus. But the omnibus quite belonged to fairyland too; it
did not go rattling and jolting, but stole quietly up the long
hill; letting me enjoy a view of the river and the hills of
the opposite shore, coloured as they were by the setting sun,
and crisp and sharp in the cool June air. Then a great round-
topped building came in place of my view; the road took a turn
behind it.
"What is that?" I asked the doctor.
"I am sorry, Daisy, I don't know. I am quite as ignorant as
yourself."
"That is the riding-hall," I heard somebody say.
One omnibus full had gone up before us; and there, were only
two or three people in ours besides our own party. I looked
round, and saw that the information had been given by a young
man in a sort of uniform; he was all in grey, with large round
gilt buttons on his coat, and a soldier's cap. The words had
been spoken in a civil tone, that tempted me on.
"Thank you!" I said. "The riding-hall! who rides in it?"
"We do," he said, and then smiled, "the cadets."
It was a frank smile and a pleasant face and utterly the look
of a gentleman. So, though I saw that he was very much amused,
either at himself or me, I went on
"And those other buildings ?"
"Those are the stables."
I wondered at the neat, beautiful order of the place. Then,
the omnibus slowly mounting the hill, the riding-hall and
stables were lost to sight. Another building, of more
pretension, appeared on our left hand, on the brow of the
ascent; our road turned the corner round this building, and
beneath a grove of young trees the gothic buttresses and
windows of grey stone peeped out. Carefully dressed green
turf, with gravelled walks leading front different directions
to the doors, looked as if this was a place of business.
Somebody pulled the string here and the omnibus stopped.
"This is the library," my neighbour in grey remarked and
with that rising and lifting his cap, he jumped out. I watched
him rapidly walking into the library; he was tall, very erect,
with a fine free carriage and firm step. But then the omnibus
was moving on and I turned to the other side. And the beauty
took away my breath. There was the green plain, girdled with
trees and houses, beset with hills, the tops of which I could
see in the distance, with the evening light upon them. The
omnibus went straight over the plain; green and smooth and
fresh, it lay on the one side and on the other side of us,
excepting one broad strip on the right. I wondered what had
taken off the grass there; but then we passed within a hedge
enclosure and drew up at the hotel steps.
"Have you met an acquaintance already, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford
asked as he handed me out.
"An acquaintance?" said I. "No, but I shall fine him soon, I
suppose." For I was thinking of Preston. But I forgot Preston
the next minute. Mrs. Sandford had seized my hand and drew me
up the piazza steps and through the hall, out to the piazza at
the north side of the house. I was in fairyland surely! I had
thought so before, but I knew it now. Those grand hills, in
the evening colours, standing over against each other on the
east and on the west, and the full magnificent river lying
between them, bright and stately, were like nothing I had ever
seen or imagined. My memory goes back now to point after point
of delight which bewildered me. There was a dainty little sail
sweeping across just at the bend of the river; I have seen
many since; I never forget that one. There was a shoulder of
one of the eastern hills, thrown out towards the south-west,
over which the evening light fell in a mantle of soft gold,
with a fold of shadow on the other side. The tops of those
eastern hills were warm with sunlight, and here and there a
slope of the western hills. There was a point of lower ground,
thrust out into the river between me and the eastern shore,
which lay wholly in shadow, one soft mass of dusky green,
rounding out into a promontory. Above it, beyond it, at the
foot of the hills, a white church spire rose sharp as a
needle. It is all before me, even the summer stillness in
which my senses were rapt. There was a clatter in the house
behind me, but I did not hear it then.
I was obliged to go away to get ready for tea. The house was
full; only one room could be spared for Mrs. Sandford and me.
That one had been engaged beforehand, and its window looked
over the same view I had seen from the piazza. I took my post
at this window while waiting for Mrs. Sandford. Cooler and
crisper the lights, cooler and grayer the shadows had grown;
the shoulder of the east mountain had lost its mantle of
light; just a gleam rested on a peak higher up; and my single
white sail was getting small in the distance, beating up the
river. I was very happy. My school year, practically, was
finished, and I was vaguely expecting some order or turn of
affairs which would join me to my father and mother. I
remember well what a flood of satisfied joy poured into my
heart as I stood at the window. I seemed to myself so very
rich, to taste all that delight of hills and river; the
richness of God's giving struck me with a sort of wonder. And
then, being so enriched, and tasting the deep treasures of
heaven and earth which I had been made to know, happy so
exceedingly, it came to my heart with a kind of pang, the
longing to make others know what I knew; and the secret
determination to use all my strength as Christ's servant, in
bringing others to the joy of the knowledge of him.
I was called from my window then, and my view was exchanged
for the crowded dining-room, where I could eat nothing. But
after tea we got out upon the piazza again, and a soft north-
west breeze seemed to be food and refreshment too. Mrs.
Sandford soon found a colonel and a general to talk to; but
Dr. Sandford sat down by me.
"How do you like it, Daisy?"
I told him, and thanked him for bringing me.
"Are you tired?"
"No I don't think I am tired."
"You are not hungry of course, for you can eat nothing. Do you
think you shall sleep?"
"I don't feel like it now. I do not generally get sleepy till a
great while after this."
"You will go to sleep somewhere about nine o'clock," said the
doctor; "and not wake up till you are called in the morning."
I thought he was mistaken, but as I could not prove it I said
nothing.
"Are you glad to get away from school?"
"On some accounts. I like school too, Dr. Sandford; but there
are some things I do not like."
"That remark might be made, Daisy, about every condition of
life with which I am acquainted."
"I could not make it just now," I said.
He smiled.
"Have you secured a large circle of friends among your
schoolmates, that are to last for ever?"
"I do not think they love me well enough for that," I said,
wondering somewhat at my guardian's questioning mood.
"Nor you them?"
"I suppose not."
"Why, Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "I am surprised! I thought
you used to love everybody."
I tried to think how that might be, and whether I had changed.
Dr. Sandford interrupted my thoughts again
"How is it with friends out of school?"
"I have none," I said; thinking only of girls like myself.
"None?" he said. "Do you really know nobody in New York?"
"Nobody, but one old lady."
"Who is that, Daisy?"
He asked short and coolly, like one who had a right to know;
and then I remembered he had the right. I gave him Miss
Cardigan's name and number.
"Who is she? and who lives with her?"
"Nobody lives with her; she has only her servants."
"What do you know about her then, besides what she has told
you? Excuse me, and please have the grace to satisfy me."
"I know I must," I said half laughing.
"_Must?_"
"You know I must too, Dr. Sandford."
"I don't know it indeed," said he. "I know I must ask; but I
do not know what power can force you to answer."
"Isn't it my duty, Dr. Sandford?"
"Nobody but Daisy Randolph would have asked that question," he
said. "Well, if duty is on my side, I know I am powerful. But,
Daisy, you always used to answer me, in times when there was
no duty in the case."
"I remember," I said, smiling to think of it; "but I was a
child then, Dr. Sandford."
"Oh! Well, apropos of duty, you may go on about Miss
Cardigan."
"I do not know a great deal to tell. Only that she is very
good, very kind to me and everybody; very rich, I believe; and
very wise, I think. I know nothing more except the way her
money was made."
"How was it ?"
"I have heard that her mother was a market-woman," I said very
unwillingly; for I knew the conclusions that would be drawn.
"Is it likely," Dr. Sandford said slowly, "that the daughter
of a market-woman should be a good friend in every respect for
the daughter of Mrs. Randolph?"
"It may not be _likely_," I answered with equal slowness; "but
it is true."
"Can you prove your position, Daisy?"
"What is your objection to her, Dr. Sandford?"
"Simply what you have told me. The different classes of
society are better apart."
I was silent. If Miss Cardigan was not of my class, I knew I
wanted to be of hers. There were certain words running in my
head about "a royal priesthood, a peculiar people," and
certain other words too which I thought it was no use to
tell Dr. Sandford.
"She has no family, you say, nor friends who live with her, or
whom you meet at her house?"
"None at all. I think she is quite alone."
There was silence again. That is, between the doctor and me.
Mrs. Sandford and her officers kept up a great run of talk
hard by.
"Now, Daisy," said the doctor, "you have studied the matter,
and I do not doubt have formed a philosophy of your own by
this time. Pray make me the wiser."
"I have no philosophy of my own, Dr. Sandford."
"Your own thus far, that nobody shares it with you."
"Is that your notion of me," I said, laughing.
"A very good notion. Nothing is worse than commonplace people.
Indulge me, Daisy."
So I thought I had better.
"Dr. Sandford, if you will indulge me. What is _your_ notion
of dignity ?"
He passed his hand over his hair, with a comical face. It was
a very fine face, as I knew long ago; even a noble face. A
steady, clear blue eye like his, gives one a sure impression
of power in the character, and of sweetness too. I was glad he
had asked me the question, but I waited for him to answer mine
first.
"My notion of dignity!" he exclaimed. "I don't believe I have
any, Daisy."
"No, but we are talking seriously."
"Very. We always are, when you are one of the talkers."
"Then please explain your notion of dignity."
"I know it when I see it," said the doctor; "but faith! I
don't know what makes it."
"Yes, but you think some people, or some classes, are set up
above others."
"So do you."
"What do you think makes the highest class, then?"
"You are going too deep, or too high, which is the same thing.
All I mean is, that certain feet which fate has planted on
lofty levels, ought not to come down from them."
"But it is good to know where we stand."
"Very," said Dr. Sandford, laughing. That is, in his way of
laughing. It was never loud.
"I will tell you where I want to stand," I went on. "It is the
highest level of all. The Lord Jesus said, 'Whosoever shall do
the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is MY
BROTHER, and MY SISTER, and MOTHER.' I want to be one of
those."
"But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "the society of the world is
not arranged on that principle."
I knew it very well. I said nothing.
"And you cannot, just yet, go out of the world."
It was no use to tell Dr. Sandford what I thought. I was
silent still.
"Daisy," said he, "you are worse than you used to be." And I
heard a little concern in his words, only half hid by the
tone.
"You do not suppose that such words as those you quoted just
now, were meant to be a practical guide in the daily affairs
of life? Do you ?"
"How can I help it, Dr. Sandford?" I answered. "I would like
to have my friends among those whom the King will call His
sisters and brothers."
"And what do you think of correct grammar, and clean hands?"
he asked.
"Clean hands!" I echoed.
"You like them," he said smiling. "The people you mean often
go without them if report says true."
"Not the people _I_ mean," I said.
"And education, Daisy; and refined manners; and cultivated
tastes; what will you do without all these? In the society you
speak of they are seldom found."
"You do not know the society I speak of, Dr. Sandford; and
Miss Cardigan has all these, more or less; besides something a
great deal better."
Dr. Sandford rose up suddenly and introduced me to a Captain
Southgate who came up; and the conversation ran upon West
Point things and nothings after that. I was going back over my
memory, to find in how far religion had been associated with
some other valued things in the instances of my experience,
and I heard little of what was said. Mr. Dinwiddie had been a
gentleman, as much as any one I ever knew; he was the first.
My old Juanita had the manners of a princess, and the tact of
a fine lady. Miss Cardigan was a capital compound of sense,
goodness, business energies, and gentle wisdom. The others,
well, yes, they were of the despised orders of the world. My
friend Darry, at the stables of Magnolia, my friend Maria,
in the kitchen of the great house, the other sable and sober
faces that came around theirs in memory's grouping, they
were not educated nor polished nor elegant. Yet well I knew,
that having owned Christ before me, He would own them before
the angels of heaven; and what would they be in that day! I
was satisfied to be numbered with them.
I slept, as Dr. Sandford had prophesied I would, that night. I
awoke to a vision of beauty.
My remembrance of those days that followed is like a summer
morning, with a diamond hanging to every blade of grass.
I awoke suddenly, that first day, and rushed to the window.
The light had broken, the sun was up; the crown of the morning
was upon the heads of the hills; here and there a light wreath
of mist lay along their sides, floating slowly off, or softly
dispersing; the river lay in quiet beauty waiting for the
gilding that should come upon it. I listened the brisk notes
of a drum and fife came to my ear, playing one after another
joyous and dancing melody. I thought that never was a place so
utterly delightsome as this place. With all speed I dressed
myself, noiselessly, so as not to waken Mrs. Sandford; and
then I resolved I would go out and see if I could not find a
place where I could be by myself; for in the house there was
no chance of it. I took Mr. Dinwiddie's Bible and stole down
stairs. From the piazza where we had sat last night, a flight
of steps led down. I followed it, and found another flight,
and still another. The last landed me in a gravelled path; one
track went down the steep face of the bank, on the brow of
which the hotel stood; another track crossed that and wound
away to my right, with a gentle downward slope. I went this
way. The air was delicious; the woods were musical with birds
the morning light filled my pathway and, glancing from trees
or rocks ahead of me, lured me on with a promise of glory. I
seemed to gather the promise as I went, and still I was drawn
further and further. Glimpses of the river began to show
through the trees; for all this bank side was thickly wooded.
I left walking and took to running. At last I came out upon
another gravelled walk, low down on the hillside, lying
parallel with the river and open to it. Nothing lay between
but some masses of granite rock, grey and lichened, and a soft
fringe of green underbrush and small wood in the intervals.
Moreover, I presently found a comfortable seat on a huge grey
stone, where the view was uninterrupted, by any wood growth;
and if I thought before that this was fairyland, I now almost
thought myself a fairy. The broad river was at my feet; the
morning light was on all the shores, sparkled from the granite
rocks below me and flashed from the polished leaves, and
glittered on the water; filling all the blue above with
radiance; touching here and there a little downy cloud;
entering in and lying on my heart. I shall never forget it.
The taste of the air was as one tastes life and strength and
vigour. It all rolled in on me a great burden of joy.
It was not the worst time or place in the world to read the
Bible. But how all the voices of nature seemed to flow in and
mix with the reading, I cannot tell, no more than I can number
them; the whirr of a bird's wing, the liquid note of a wood
thrush, the stir and movement of a thousand leaves, the gurgle
of rippling water, the crow's call, and the song-sparrow's
ecstasy. Once or twice the notes of a bugle found their way
down the hill, and reminded me that I was in a place of
delightful novelty. It was just a fillip to my enjoyment, as I
looked on and off my page alternately.
By and by I heard footsteps, quick yet light footsteps,
sounding on the gravel. Measured and quick they came; then two
figures rounded a point close by me. There were two, but their
footfalls had sounded as one. They were dressed alike, all in
grey, like my friend in the omnibus. As they passed me, the
nearest one hastily pulled off his cap, and I caught just a
flash from a bright eye. It was the same. I looked after them
as they left my point and were soon lost behind another;
thinking that probably Preston was dressed so and had been
taught to walk so; and with renewed admiration of a place
where the inhabitants kept such an exquisite neatness in their
dress and moved like music. There was a fulness of content in
my mind, as at length I slowly went back up my winding path to
the hotel, warned by the furious sounds of a gong that
breakfast was in preparation.
As I toiled up the last flight of steps I saw Dr. Sandford on
the piazza. His blue eye looked me all over and looked me
through, I felt. I was accustomed to that, both from the
friend and the physician, and rather liked it.
"What is on the other side of the house?" I asked.
"Let us go and see." And as we went, the doctor took my book
from my hand to carry it for me. He opened it, too, and looked
at it. On the other side or two sides of the house stretched
away the level green plain. At the back of it, stood houses
half hidden by trees; indeed all round two sides of the plain
there vas a border of buildings and of flourishing trees as
yell. Down the north side, from the hotel where we were, a
road went winding; likewise under arching trees; here and
there I could see cannon and a bit of some military work. All
the centre of the plain was level and green, and empty; and
from the hotel to the library stretched a broad strip of bare
ground, brown and dusty, alongside of the road by which we had
come across last night. In the morning sun, as indeed under
all other lights and at all other hours, this scene was one of
satisfying beauty. Behind the row of houses at the western
edge of the plain, the hills rose up, green and wooded, height
above height; and an old fortification stood out now under the
eastern illumination, picturesque and grey, high up among
them. As Dr. Sandford and I were silent and looking, I saw
another grey figure pass down the road.
"Who are those people that wear grey, with a black stripe down
the leg?" I asked.
"Grey?" said the doctor. "Where?"
"There is one yonder under the trees," I said, "and there was
one in the omnibus yesterday. Are those the cadets?"
"I suppose so."
"Then Preston wears that dress. I wonder how I shall find him,
Dr. Sandford?"
"Find whom?" said the doctor, waking up.
"My cousin Preston Preston Gary. He is here."
"Here?" repeated the doctor.
"Yes he is a cadet didn't you know it? He has been here a
long while; he has only one more year, I believe. How can we
find him, Dr. Sandford?"
"I am ignorant, Daisy."
"But we must find him," I said, "for of course he will want to
see me, and I want to see him, very much."
The doctor was silent, and I remember an odd sense I had that
he was not pleased. I cannot tell how I got it; he neither did
nor said anything to make me think so; he did not even look
anywise different from usual; yet I felt it and was sure of
it, and unspeakably mystified at it. Could Preston have been
doing anything wrong? Yet the doctor would not know that, for
he was not even aware that Preston was in the Military Academy
till I told him.
"I do not know, Daisy," he said at last; "but we can find out.
I will ask Captain Southgate or somebody else."
"Thank you," I said. "Who are those, Dr. Sandford, those
others dressed in dark frock coats, with bright bars over
their shoulders? like that one just now going out of the
gate?"
"Those are officers of the army."
"There are a good many of them. What are they here for? Are
there many soldiers here?"
"No " said the doctor "I believe not. I think these
gentlemen are put here to look after the grey coats the
cadets, Daisy. The cadets are here in training, you know."
"But that officer who just went out who is walking over the
plain now he wore a sword, Dr. Sandford, and a red sash.
They do not all wear them. What is that for?"
"What is under discussion?" said Mrs. Sandford, coming out.
"How well Daisy looks this morning, don't she?"
"She has caught the military fever already," said the doctor.
"I brought her here for a sedative; but I find it is no such
matter."
"Sedative!" said Mrs. Sandford; but at this instant my ears
were "caught" by a burst of music on the plain. Mrs. Sandford
broke into a fit of laughter. The doctor's hand touched my
shoulder.
"Get your hat, Daisy," he said. "I will go with you to hear
it."
I might tell of pleasure from minute to minute of that day,
and of the days following. The breath of the air, the notes of
the wind instruments, the flicker of sunlight on the gravel,
all come back to me as I write, and I taste them again. Dr.
Sandford and I went down the road I have described, leading
along the edge of the plain at its northern border; from which
the view up over the river, between the hills, was very
glorious. Fine young trees shaded this road; on one side a
deep hollow or cup in the green plain excited my curiosity;
on the other, lying a little down the bank, a military work of
some odd sort planted with guns. Then one or two little
pyramidal heaps of cannon-balls by the side of the road,
marked this out as unlike all other roads I had ever
traversed. At the further side of the plain we came to the row
of houses I had seen from a distance, which ran north and
south, looking eastward over all the plain. The road which
skirted these houses was shaded with large old trees; and on
the edge of the greensward under the trees, we found a number
of iron seats placed for the convenience of spectators. And
here, among many others, Dr. Sandford and I sat down.
There was a long line of the grey uniforms now drawn up in
front of us; at some little distance; standing still and doing
nothing, that I could see. Nearer to us and facing them stood
a single grey figure; I looked hard, but could not make out
that it was Preston. Nearer still, stood with arms folded one
of those who the doctor had said were army officers; I
thought, the very one I had seen leave the hotel; but all like
statues, motionless and fixed. Only the band seemed to have
some life in them.
"What is it, Dr. Sandford?" I whispered, after a few minutes
of intense enjoyment.
"Don't know, Daisy."
"But what are they doing?"
"I don't know, Daisy."
I nestled down into silence again, listening, almost with a
doubt of my own senses, as the notes of the instruments
mingled with the summer breeze and filled the June sunshine.
The plain looked most beautiful, edged with trees on three
sides, and bounded to the east, in front of me, by a chain of
hills soft and wooded, which I afterwards found were beyond
the river. Near at hand, the order of military array, the
flash of a sword, the glitter of an epaulette, the glance of
red sashes here and there, the regularity of a perfect
machine. I said nothing more to Dr. Sandford; but I gathered
drop by drop the sweetness of the time.
The statues broke into life a few minutes later, and there was
a stir of business of some sort; but I could make out nothing
of what they were doing. I took it on trust, and enjoyed
everything to the full till the show was over.